Seasonal Web Traffic

If you own and run a website or websites, like I do, you are probably pretty concerned with what’s around the corner.

Back in business school, we learned about something call a “SWOT analysis.” I remember, during the time I was copying homework assignments straight from the textbook, I thought to myself that this was total garbage and I would never, ever use something like this. Well, as it turns out, this stuff has been pretty useful. Like anything else you learn in life, these things have ways of creeping and staying in your head. You would be surprised at how much I think of various business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

One thing I constantly ponder over is what is to come. I try to prepare and educate myself on what’s going to happen one month, three months, five years down the road. Like any other website out there, my websites have cyclical, or seasonal traffic flow. Motorcycle searches and sales occur much more during the months of April, May and June. People are searching for and visiting pet related websites in the summer and around Christmas. I would be neglecting my business if I didn’t know this and prepare for it. Of course, the way to prepare is to schedule certain things, have enough manpower for certain other things and have plenty of resources for even more things.

When I think of website (or internet as a whole) traffic, I often think of stocks. When I look at past performance and highs and lows of certain keywords, I can generally predict what is going to happen in the coming year. I think I have done a good job of this type of thing, considering I have shuffled websites and servers around four times in the past two years. I don’t want to over do it on the resource side, because that would be wasting money. I want just enough to grow for the coming year, without hindering performance.

Here is a little hint – when trying to compensate for cycles in any business, the trick is to diversify. If you are selling snow cones in the summer, it might also be wise to sell moon boots in the winter. That way, you can have a steady income. That is probably why motorcycle dealers sell dirtbikes, street motorcycles and snowmobiles at different times of the year. That’s just my two cents.

Ok, so what’s the point? Go over and take a visit to Rankmon.com and type in your website’s URL. Then, hop over to Google Trends and type in your website’s most popular keywords from Rankmon. You will see the cycle of your website, or what you can expect anyway. If the wave is way up and down, you may want to set up another website that has opposite traffic of your current one. Or, you can just go out and ride your bike or something.